Luo Binghe looks away, his eyes burning. It is impossible to believe himself kind. He lives with himself. It's the grasping, scraping desperation of a poor orphan that Nina is describing, the need to make himself valuable to people who matter so he won't lose them. The compulsion to care for them with all his abilities, because his most beloved person died before he had the means to do so for her. The shadow of that child still walks in step with him. He wants to be the person Nina sees in him, but he has been here before, with over one hundred wives. All thought they knew him at one time or another. Their affection has never been enough to touch the rot at his core.

"You were kind to me. You didn't judge me, and tried to understand, even when I was in a dark and mercurial temper. I do not know if I would have been kind otherwise. I'm afraid to think how it could have been, if we'd met under different circumstances, and I failed to recognize the qualities that make you more precious to me than rare jade."